


(denial)

by loveymoons



Category: South Park
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mutual Pining, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:30:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveymoons/pseuds/loveymoons
Summary: Cartman calls Kyle late at night to make brownies. Kyle knows that something is wrong.





	(denial)

**Author's Note:**

> hi everybody, this is a secret santa present for mar, @mar-shmallow on tumblr. she's so, so lovely and sweet, so go say hi to her! 
> 
> i haven't posted anything in forever. phew. here we go, i guess.
> 
> edit: forgot to add that they're about 17 here, in case it wasn't clear! 
> 
> come say hi to me! @loveymoons

Kyle reached for his buzzing phone on the bedside table. He accepted the call without looking at who it was, though he suspected it was Stan or Cartman. With that thought, a cluster headache began to form behind his right eye, so he shoved his palm there.

“ _What_ ,” he said, looking at his digital clock. He squinted at the red numbers. The time read 2:12 AM. “I was _sleeping_.”

“Well hello to you too, Kyle,” Cartman replied. Kyle flipped on his back and looked at the ceiling. Sometimes he considered blocking Cartman’s number for this precise reason: the late-night calls for seemingly no other reason than to irritate him. Sometimes Cartman would call, laughing, just to tell him something funny he saw or a joke he thought of. His thumb hovered over the end-call symbol.

“You’ve got one minute to explain why you’re calling,” Kyle barked, closing his eyes. He could just go back to sleep. Yes, he could hang up right now, turn off his phone, and descend into the open-armed haven of unconsciousness. It was tempting.

Then again, Cartman had been haunting his dreams recently. More than once he woke up with sticky thighs and the brief consideration of throwing himself off a bridge. If they had just been nightmares, he wouldn’t have a problem.

“Fine, _Kyle_ , I’ll just ask Kenny instead if he wants to make brownies with me,” Cartman barked back, “I thought _you_ might like to, but someone is a little cranky.”

Kyle ran a hand down his face. “It’s two in the fucking morning! You need to go to sleep. And don’t wake up Kenny either, he has work in the morning,” he said, flipping back on his side. He eyed the flannel hanging off the back of his chair. His intuition gravely foretold that he would end up leaving to Cartman’s house despite the time.

“Then come over,” Cartman whined. On the other end, Kyle could hear the ring of an aluminum mixing bowl and the scrape of a whisk and the dull thud of a milk jug. So he was serious about this, he thought. He sat up and turned a lamp on, rubbing his eyes.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Kyle asked. As Cartman-esque as the situation was, he had a hard time believing this was just a spontaneous craving. Once, he told Kyle that baking helped him focus; Kyle could only assume he needed to focus _away_ from something, something that was keeping him from sleeping.

Silence followed on the other end. That was all the confirmation he needed. “I’ll see you in a few minutes,” Kyle said, “Just let me put on pants.”

“I don’t know, you could sport a balls-out sort of look,” Cartman teased.

“ _Goodbye_ , Cartman,” Kyle said, ending the call with a roll of his eyes. He looked out into the pitch dark of his room. Sometimes he felt he could gawk at himself, this balancing act of close but not too close, friends but enemies, hated but deeply, deeply loved. Because he loved Cartman. He—

He needed to splash his face with cold water. He pulled on a pair of jeans and walked to the bathroom, pushing the door open. When he turned the light on, he dared not look at his reflection, his dark, sunken eyes devoid of childhood joy, his cheeks with leftover scarring from puberty. And his hair—good God he needed a haircut—he touched the heighty mass of curls and tried to pat it down to no avail. At least he had his intelligence, he thought, because he was beyond fucked elsewhere.

He took a piss, washed his face, and re-centered himself. He had a handle on his feelings, right? That’s all they were-- feelings. Feelings for Eric Cartman, sure, but a lot of people had things they never, ever talked about and took to the grave.

He walked back to his room for his flannel, pulled it over his arms, and then stopped in front of Ike’s door. Under the lip of the door, blue light seeped out. He could hear muttering and soft, angry cursing, most of which accompanied a defeated, “c’mon!”

So he awake for one. For two, he was playing video games, so it was safe to enter.

Kyle knocked anyways and then poked his head in. Ike moved one side of his headphones off and then swiveled back in his chair to look at him. “What’s up?” he whispered.

Kyle surveyed Ike’s desk in a one quick, judgmental flicker of the eye. So _that’s_ where the family-sized bag of Doritos went, he thought. He frowned and then said: “I’m going out. If Mom wakes up and sees I’m gone, tell her, uh—tell her that Stan was having some issues with his parents again and needed someone to talk to.”

 “Yeah,” Ike replied. Just before Kyle could leave, he added, “Where are you really going, though? It sounded like you were on the phone.”

Kyle pressed his lips together. If nothing was going on between him and Cartman, he reasoned, than he shouldn’t have to lie. He decided on a partial truth. “I’m going to Cartman’s,” he said, “We’re just going to drink and watch movies.”

“At two in the morning,” Ike said.

“Yeah, it’s—you’ll understand in a few years.”

Ike took his headphones off completely and looked at his feet. Kyle got the uncomfortable feeling that Ike was about to tell him something serious. He blinked at him, waiting.

“Look, Kyle... I just want you to know that Mom asked me if something was going on between you and Cartman. So...”

He processed what Ike said and started to panic. If Sheila was suspicious, that meant it was obvious how he felt, that he couldn’t wipe it off his dumb fucking face for two minutes—

“No,” Kyle blurted, “Ike—I _hate_ Cartman. I know I talk about him a lot, and I know—I know we’ve gotten closer as of late—fuck! That doesn’t sound right.”

Kyle began again, this time raising his hands in front of him. “What I’m saying, Ike, is that people mature when they get older, and Cartman’s mature, sort of—and we’re closer now because of it but—but! But as _friends_. Nothing else. Period.”

Ike nodded, but his lips started to twitch into a smile. He tried to wipe it off, still nodding, but Kyle demanded he tell him what was so hilarious about the heart palpitations that _he_ had given him.

 “Ha!” Ike exclaimed, pointing at him, “I knew it! There _is_ something going on between you and that fatass! Your lying game ba-lows—“

“What!” Kyle hissed back, closing Ike’s door behind him. “Did Mom ask or not, Ike?”

“Nah, I just wanted to confirm my suspicions,” Ike replied, relaxing back into his chair. A smug, accomplished smile spread to his face.

Kyle clenched his hand into a fist. Oh, if only it wasn’t two in the morning. The temptation to charge him and pin him was so, so enticing. He eyed the flimsy disks of his video games, considering how upset he’d be if he split one in half. No. He had something better.

“Mention this to Mom and I _will_ tell her about that carton of cigarettes I found in your bag,” he growled. “And who knows, maybe I’ll add that I smelled them and oh, they smelled a lil funny, not like regular—“

“You wouldn’t—“

“I would.”

Rolling his eyes, Ike rested his chin in his hand. He planted his feet on the floor to swivel back and forth. “I’m not going to tell her, okay? You don’t need to bitch me out. I just—it’s so obvious that—“

“Nothing’s going on between Cartman and me,” Kyle said, “Because I haven’t told him. I...”

The silence thickened a little. Kyle saw a hint of guilt in Ike’s eyes, and the anger poured through his hands like fine sands; quickly and all at once. Ike put his headphones back on. “You should go. Tell fatass that I said hi,” he said.

“I will,” Kyle said. He hesitated with a half-step and Ike looked over his shoulder again.

“Theoretically, if I were to—I can’t believe I’m saying this—if something were to happen between Cartman and me...”

“Then I’d be there for you,” Ike said, “But I won’t stop bullying him. Not now, not ever.”

“Fair.”

Ike turned around again. Biting his cheek, Kyle walked out and half-jogged down the steps. He pulled on his gloves and his boots and entered into the cold, biting air. He welcomed it with a lung-full. Thin flecks of ice fell from the skies, visible only in the cone of light under street lamps.

As he started towards Cartman’s home, he still thought of Ike. Shouldn’t he have expected him to say something? Ike confronted him about being gay long before his parents did, so it made sense for Ike to confront him about Cartman too.

It made his blood run cold to think of _what_ drove Ike think that; _how_ he came to that conclusion. Did he laugh too much at Cartman’s jokes; did he look too long at Cartman’s lips? He knew he had an earful to talk about Cartman, but it was almost always about how much he hated him, not that he thought about running his hands through his soft, shiny hair.

Then again, he and Cartman had been pushing the friendship line for a while. He and Stan pushed it too, but not in the fashion that he and Cartman did. Kyle could wear Stan’s jacket and no one would blink an eye, but when he put Cartman’s sweatshirt on over a coffee-spilled shirt, Kenny inquired if he and Cartman slept together. Yes, he could split his sandwich with Stan and no one would think much. But the one time he fed a spoonful of gelato to Cartman—just to let him try it, he defended—Butters wanted to know if they “made it official.”

Something, he knew, lie in the energy between them. Intense yet unidentifiable. It had the same power of an approaching storm, silent and static, just waiting for that right point of contact. They kept missing each other. Other people could see it approaching, but they were in the middle of it, dodging any insinuations that something deeper was going on, never looking in each other’s eyes too long.

On Cartman’s doorstep, Kyle reached up to pull his hat down. His hands met hair instead. His hat—he forgot—

Maybe Cartman wouldn’t notice. Kyle laughed to himself. Wishful thinking. He’d been trying to wear it less anyways. No one wore the same style of hat as their nine-year-old self. (He had one enabler at his side, and that was Stan. Stan wore his childhood hat until a hole formed in the brim at 14, and then he bought a replica of it, only a little hesitant about the darker colors.)

Instead of knocking, Kyle tried the front door and found it unlocked. He laid his gloves and boots aside. Mr. Kitty slept on the back of the couch, one glassy eye opening to see who it was.

“I’m here,” Kyle called, walking to the kitchen. He almost smiled to see Cartman. He was in pajama pants and a sweatshirt, looking so opportune to cuddle up to that Kyle had to bite the suggestion on his tongue. A lit cigarette hung from Cartman’s lips, less attractive, but that didn’t stop Kyle’s eyes from flickering over his smooth lips, the uplifted corner of his smirk.

“About time, fucker,” Cartman replied, “Did you have to rub one out before you left or something? You took forever.”

“I got caught up talking to Ike,” Kyle explained, shrugging his jacket off. He laid it over a kitchen chair. “You’re going to set the smoke alarm off.”

“It’s broken smartass.”

“I should’ve guessed.”

Kyle shoved his hands in his jean pockets, aching to go over and hug him. He always waited for Cartman to initiate. He figured if he hugged back hard enough, that he’d get the message that he _wanted_ to hug him, but just wasn’t sure if he should.

Cartman put his cigarette out on a glass ashtray sitting on the kitchen table. It was full. Between him and Liane, they were always bumming cigarettes off each other and dumping the ashtray, looking upon each other’s habit with mutual apathy. (“Oh, I’d rather he do that than coke,” Liane once told Kyle, zipping up the side of her knee-high boot, “You have to choose your battles as a parent.”)

“And you ditched the pussy hat?” Cartman teased, walking over to Kyle. Just his presence made Kyle stiffen and straighten out his back—a similar knee-jerk reflex as a girl twisting her hair over her finger. Cartman reached up to push his hand in Kyle’s curls, his fingers getting caught in the dense ringlets. He gripped over his scalp.

“No,” Kyle mumbled, looking elsewhere, “Just—I just forgot.” He could feel Cartman’s eyes on him. Admiring, a little affectionate. It was almost unbearable for him. If he looked him in the eye, he feared he would lean in and push his lips on his, ask him to play with his hair a little more. He stepped away.

“So we’re making brownies?” Kyle asked, looking over the counter. Everything was out and organized, spice bottles side-by-side, bowls in place, utensils stacked in one another. Cartman approached the counter and nodded, opening a cabinet.

He took out a small radio. When he turned it over, he eyed the empty radio panel. “Look in that top drawer—right by your hip,” he told Kyle, watching him open it. “Give me two double-A’s.”

Kyle handed the batteries to him, placing them in his palm. Cartman’s hands were always soft. As kids he found it weird, but now he found it attractive, often a catalyst to him thinking about Cartman’s hands in other places—

“This is my Mom’s radio,” Cartman smiled, turning to Kyle. Kyle refocused. “She used to play it all the time. She’d dance around the kitchen and then grab my hands and dance with me too. I just want to see if it works, and then we can start.”

Cartman fit the batteries in and switched the radio on. They both flinched at the ear-splitting static. Cartman turned it down and began to tune it, going past each number, nothing, until he could hear the start of a song. He tuned the radio until the voice was clear.

Kyle didn’t recognize who it was. It sounded soft and acoustic, a bit of a 70s vibe. He was about to suggest they change it until Cartman turned to him, grinning, and told him it was station where people could request songs for their lovers.

“Is it?” Kyle laughed, “That’s kind of gay, dude.” Cartman’s smile faltered a bit, irritated, and Kyle had to stop himself from taking it back. (His pride stopped him too. It _was_ gay; that is, both the station and the choice to leave it on that station.)

“None of the other stations are working,” Cartman defended, rolling his eyes. He set the bowl in front of them. “Anyways. Don’t mess this up for us, Kyle.”

Kyle sighed. He has to admit that he really was a bad cook—last time he tried to make an omelet, it caught fire. Ike just pointed and laughed until he was in tears, refusing to help him. It took him a pot lid to smother the spreading flame. “I’ll follow your lead.”

Kyle did as Cartman told him—for the most part, he was measuring out quantities, cracking eggs, and hand-mixing things. Cartman commented on the definition in his upper arm, walking his fingertips up the lean muscle and just beneath his shirt sleeve. Kyle focused intensely on the batter, hoping if he focused well enough that he could ignore Cartman’s fingertips.

After pouring the batter into the greased pan, Cartman pushed the brownies into the oven and set the timer for about 30 minutes. Kyle looked at the time. Now it was nearing four in the morning, and he remembered, with a beckon of fatigue, that he had slept a short two hours before coming over to Cartman’s.

Cartman looked awake. No doubt the nicotine had his heart racing despite his calm demeanor. He debated whether he should bring up his nightmare again or leave it alone—it was a touchy subject for him, often resulting in a short, vague answer.

Kyle was determined to show him he cared without overstepping that space the pair enforced between each other—but maybe that wasn’t possible, and Kyle thought with a bit of stress that if Cartman were to trust him, _he_ would have to be the one to initiate, and _he_ would have to open _his_ arms for Cartman to feel safe being defenseless in.

He glanced at Cartman and Cartman glanced back at him, sighing. The radio still hummed in the background, static rising in and out. The song that played was deep and melodic, voice-centric, nothing but a guitar strum and someone’s tender heart. “We can watch TV,” Cartman suggested, “Nothing else to do but wait.”

When the silence fell, Kyle tuned into the radio again. The _radio_. Cartman opened up to him about the radio, he thought, maybe he could go from there. He’d have to be bold—he swallowed at the thought, making Cartman purse his lips in question—but he was determined to take action.

“ _Or_ ,” Kyle began, taking Cartman’s waist, “We can dance. Y’know. Like you and your Mom used to, sort of. Except with me.”

Cartman met his eyes, startled—when’s the last time he saw him _startled_? He smiled, bright and happy, and Cartman could see Liane’s pretty face in his. Just a touch feminine; the roundness in his cheeks gave him a heart-shaped outline. Kyle smiled back.

“What happened to ‘that’s gay’?” Cartman teased, resting his arms on Kyle’s chest. He slid one up to his shoulder and Kyle shivered, eyes falling on his again.

“This is as gay as it could get, so I think we’ve passed that threshold,” Kyle replied, making Cartman snort. They swayed slowly, clumsily, until Cartman started to lead, finding a rhythm to follow. The hand on Kyle’s shoulder went higher to his hair again, fingertips rubbing his scalp.

“I knew you liked that earlier,” Cartman said. Kyle swallowed. Control—he needed to remind himself he was in control of his feelings, and that allowing one thing to slip up and happen would be his downfall, a steep slope right into the pit of Cartman. He was supposed to be _helping_ Cartman, not getting worked up by him.

“Yeah,” Kyle mumbled back, head tilting to his touch. “It’s been a while since someone played with my hair, uh—since I’ve let someone, I mean. It’s. Yeah.”

Reaching back, Kyle took Cartman’s hand and squeezed it, fingers closing softly over his. His thumb ran over his knuckles, the deep-tissue scarring that had formed there as a child. When Cartman started going through therapy at 13, he deflected his anger towards others onto himself, finding that the only relief was to punch walls.

Kyle remembered forcing Cartman’s hands under rushing warm water, cleaning the wounds himself. He remembered wrapping them in white bandages. Most of all, he remembered that look in Cartman’s eyes, intense and dark, but strangely curious.

That’s what Kyle remembered as his first taste of feeling for him, that tightening of his chest and throat. How he was torn between wanting to kiss his hands after wrapping them or yell at him for being so, so stupid.

“What are you thinking about?” Cartman asked.

“Nothing,” Kyle replied. Licking his lips, he added, “What was your nightmare about?”

Stepping back from his arms, Cartman’s face darkened. He shook his head. “It was nothing.”

Kyle’s jaw tightened. What did he say to that? He looked down with a sigh, hands shoving back into his pockets. Back to the gap between them it was. He couldn’t close it himself. Cartman had to be willing too, he thought.

Then he thought: fuck it. Kyle was going to confront him. He didn’t leave his house at two in the morning to help Cartman just for him to shut him out. He was still the Kyle that demanded more from Cartman, more that he _knew_ was in him.

“You don’t _have_ to tell me, Cartman, but don’t fucking shut me out like that,” Kyle said.

“Shut _you_ out?” Cartman said. He laughed, loud and mocking. “You’ve done nothing but shut _me_ out. Sometimes you won’t even look at me. You tell me not to call but always pick up the phone—you—you push me away and then drag me close—“

“—I’m _trying_ to let you in—“

“—And then you push me away again! Back and forth and back and forth!”

“Cartman—“

“Just shut up for two fucking minutes!” Cartman yelled over him. Kyle fell silent. Cartman felt his pocket for the carton of cigarettes, taking one out and lighting the end. “I dreamt about a time that I thought—that I thought my Mom was never coming back. She left me alone for two days. I was a little kid, like—seven, whatever. I just cried and cried because I didn’t know what to do.”

He blew smoke from the corner of his mouth. “She’s been gone a couple days now, and I think it just brought it back for me. I’m sure she’s fine. But when that happened to me as a kid, and she came back with a black eye and bruises all over her fucking body, I felt like I didn’t know her, like she smelled different and seemed different. Even now she won’t tell me what happened.”

Kyle approached him and looked over Cartman's face, the tears shining in his eyes. He shook his head. “I’m fine,” Cartman tried, “Really, just—“

Kyle took him into his arms to hold him, pressing Cartman’s head close with a hand on his hair. He had nothing to say, and thanking him would have felt too unreal. His lips met his hair in a soft, single press. He continued with this—single presses down his forehead to the bridge of his nose, and then his upper lip, and when he kissed him fully he melted against his mouth, Cartman’s lips pushing back to his in deep affection.

Kyle couldn’t remember his hands going to Cartman’s face, or how he mustered up the courage to kiss him in the first place. When he parted from his lips, he lingered inches from him. Neither of them could keep their eyes off the other’s mouths. Just as Kyle leaned in to kiss him again, the timer went off.

“The brownies,” Cartman started. Kyle nodded.

Cartman snuffed his cigarette. Wearing oven mitts, he lifted the pan from the oven and set it on the stove top. He set the mitts aside. He turned back to Kyle and grabbed his hand.

“Does this mean...”

“It means we can both quit the bullshit,” Kyle mumbled, “But we don’t have to define it yet. It can just be... our thing.”

Cartman smirked. There—he was coming back, Kyle thought, relieved. Cartman leaned up to kiss him again, this time bumping his nose, making them both laugh and shove their foreheads together. There was so much to do and touch that Kyle felt overwhelmed with possibilities, maybe even a little intimidated. Cartman could be demanding. That’s something he loved about him, though.

“Okay, it’s _five_ ,” Kyle reminded him. “We should sleep. We can just—cover the brownies and have them when we wake up or something. I want to hold you.”

Kyle almost startled at his own ease. _I want to hold you._  He never thought he would be able to just say that out loud, no hesitation. Either he was sleep deprived or still running on adrenaline. One of the two, he thought.

After placing a paper towel over the cooling pan, Kyle followed Cartman upstairs, feeling safe, for the first time, to admire the dip in his waist. Cartman opened his bedroom door and stepped over clothes to climb into bed. Kyle shut the door and joined Cartman.

He noticed the smell of his sheets, the lingering tobacco but also some sort of floral lotion, sweet and fragrant. He imagined Cartman must sit on his bed after showers to rub it on. The thought made him shiver, so he dismissed it for another time.

Cartman faced the wall as a silent instruction for Kyle to spoon him. He obliged, settling on his side behind him and sliding one hand under his neck to his chest. The other hand settled on his middle. He had been close to Cartman too many times—most of them fights, but close regardless—so it felt familiar and comfortable, dizzyingly so.

“Will you wake me up if you have another nightmare?” Kyle said against his ear, making Cartman laugh and squirm. Kyle smiled to himself.

“Yeah,” he replied, “Promise.”

“Okay.”

Kyle dipped his hand into Cartman’s sweatshirt pocket, resting his fingers on the curve of his stomach. Cartman laid his hand over his, squeezing, until his breathing began to deepen and slow. Kyle, resting his forehead to Cartman’s back, listened until he fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> this won't be the only confession scene i'll write. i've got about thirty different headcanons about how they confess to each other. the soap opera potential of these two is astounding. 
> 
> thanks for reading! <3


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